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...I came in here to blog, and brought the machine out of power save--wait, I have to rewind a bit.
You see, before I made the cookies, I found the latest video drivers and the latest version of the K-Lite Codec Pack. I installed them; and the problem I was having with the sound cutting out when playing certain video files has been fixed.
Of course, when I brought the computer out of power save--after I was finished baking--my main monitor was only on long enough to give me the login screen. Once I hit ENTER it went dark.
*sigh*
Turned on the DVD recorder and the TV, and--yep--there was my desktop. Well, fire up the control panel for the video driver--
I could not make it switch the main monitor back on. WTF? At first it wouldn't detect the monitor connected to the card; when I finally made it do that, then it refused to extend the desktop onto the main monitor.
To make matters worse, as I fiddled with the thing, somehow my desktop configuration got screwed up, so the desktop was now displayed in grayscale and wrapped around, leaving a blank bar in the middle of the TV screen and a tiny bit of the bottom of the desktop near the top of the TV screen. And I couldn't make it switch back.
I rebooted a couple times. Still no go. I even tried safe mode, for the first time since I've owned this machine. Nothing worked.
...finally, on the 4th reboot, I got back into the video driver control panel and was able to disable the thing that had screwed up my screen. Mirabile visu the main monitor turned on and the TV went dark.
Argh.
Perhaps twenty seconds later I had the proper configuration restored.
So now I get to put the computer in to power save and see if it comes back up properly, or if it fucks up my monitor configuration again. I don't need this kind of aggravation, damn it.
You would think that the software would be nailed down, you know? I don't know how long ATI has been making video cards, much less how long they've been making them with S-video outputs, but I know it's been more than a decade; it seems reasonable to expect that by now they'd know how to write software that works the way it's supposed to.
*sigh*